Nunu the Jungle Yeti: Early Game Ganking, Late Game Tanking

Nunu the Jungle Yeti: Early Game Ganking, Late Game Tanking

Why start at wraiths and not at the two fat *******s? easy level two. Shamefully easy.

Starting at wraiths you take little to no damage for one, whereas at golems you take a lot more damage. Then getting to golems you level off the first one meaning you overal take less damage then if you went golems--->wraiths. Also the timing is better with smite by a little bit, with it coming up exactly for lizard. Anyway Ice Blast is much more useful versus the golems than versus wraiths. This isn't to say golems doesn't work, I just find it less effective than wraiths lvl 1.

Anivia is another good combo with Nunu. Her blast deals double dmg when targets are chilled, and both snowball and Nunu's ult make the target chilled.

Excellent guide, btw. I haven't played Nunu in months, but I might dust him off sometime soon.

I mean Nunu + Anivia doesn't hurt, but the chill really doesn't factor. Anivia just has to ult or stun to chill them and the cd on her nuke isn't low enough to need more than that anyway. The nice thing about a good Anivia, though, is they wall the enemy team into your ult. Had a few games where this has resulted in 4/5 of the enemy having to stay in my ult/run back into my entire team. Very sexy especially in jungle.

Nice guide, I enjoyed reading it. I've had Nunu for about a month now since I bought a combo pack when I first started. I've never been tempted to try him despite generally loving Tanky melee DPS champs. I have to admit while your guide has piqued my interest I still don't see how Nunu compares to other, very similiar champs:

Galio - Has a similar, channeled AoE damage ult, but where you can run out of Nunu's to avoid the end damage, Galio's is practically a stun during the duration. Also both champs have a ranged slow attack though Galio's is a skillshot and I believe Nunu's is target-able. Both champs have a support ability, both have possibility to speed up allies, Nunu's is more effective at speeding allies, but Galio's has more utility since it also causes range damage.

Gangplank - This is a bit more of a stretch, but they both have similiar laning power with a ranged attack, and personal heal, and buff. Again the main difference here is in Ults. Nunu has to be within range and opponents can run out of it, while Gangplank can fire a MUCH larger Ult area anywhere on the map that slows and causes instant damage.

So I guess my question is, what does Nunu bring that these other 2 champs don't have? Seems like Nunu's ult is lacking to me. Guess the one thing Nunu has going for him is that he can jungle while the others can't really, and Nunu is presumably better at early game ganking but is less effective in the late game?

Nice guide, I enjoyed reading it. I've had Nunu for about a month now since I bought a combo pack when I first started. I've never been tempted to try him despite generally loving Tanky melee DPS champs. I have to admit while your guide has piqued my interest I still don't see how Nunu compares to other, very similiar champs:

Galio - Has a similar, channeled AoE damage ult, but where you can run out of Nunu's to avoid the end damage, Galio's is practically a stun during the duration. Also both champs have a ranged slow attack though Galio's is a skillshot and I believe Nunu's is target-able. Both champs have a support ability, both have possibility to speed up allies, Nunu's is more effective at speeding allies, but Galio's has more utility since it also causes range damage.

Gangplank - This is a bit more of a stretch, but they both have similiar laning power with a ranged attack, and personal heal, and buff. Again the main difference here is in Ults. Nunu has to be within range and opponents can run out of it, while Gangplank can fire a MUCH larger Ult area anywhere on the map that slows and causes instant damage.

So I guess my question is, what does Nunu bring that these other 2 champs don't have? Seems like Nunu's ult is lacking to me. Guess the one thing Nunu has going for him is that he can jungle while the others can't really, and Nunu is presumably better at early game ganking but is less effective in the late game?

Thanks for the question Kroghar. Well the biggest thing Nunu has going for him over the champions you mentioned is, as you hit on, that he can jungle extremely effectively. In fact Nunu is arguably the most efficient and quickest jungler in the game, one whose effectiveness isn't even significantly limited by masteries, runes, or beginning items (I've jungled with my ap rune page and offensive masteries on him before with boots lvl 1 by accident and still did as well as the enemies Warwick). Early game ganking like you said he also has a clear advantage.

The biggest difference between his and Galio's ult is that of function. Galio's ult is excellent, and he has been used by quite a few people as an example of a 'working' version of Nunu's ult or a 'superior' ult. However, Galio's ult is meant to disable the enemy team (like you said effectively stunning them) and control their movement while doing decent damage. Nunu's ult is still interpreted by many to be a gigantic nuke with the sole purpose of slowing the enemy and hurting them. This isn't the case though. Nunu's ult makes the enemy panic and throw all their cc at him. This can manifest itself in the enemy team splitting up, throwing all of their stuns and silences at him or anything else. It's just a patently different function that the ult serves. It can also be used for so many of the other functions I mentioned in the guide. It just has more variety and choice in it than Galio's.

Nunu's ult slow and his 6 second cooldown Ice Blast (his main nuke/slow) and Blood Boil also make him the superior chaser/kiter/slower in my opinion. This is why his is such a good ganker early game.

Gangplank on the other hand I don't believe is really that comparable to Nunu. While they have somewhat similar abilities in laning, Nunu is made to be a jungle and playing him otherwise I think is tantamount to heresy, only to be done when some ******* Warwick insists on jungling AFTER you picked Nunu and called jungle.

I think the important thing about Nunu versus the two champions you mentioned really is that he can jungle. Every team needs a jungle to be effective, so really we should be comparing junglers to eachother, not laning heroes. I definitely feel that Nunu is far more useful than jungles like Warwick (who Nunu can just control like no other with good kiting and consume steals).

Mind you I haven't played Galio very much, and little at all in ranked games but I have faced Galio's plenty of times. Thats my take on why Nunu is worth it. He's one of the best options for a good tanking jungle that has an often hard to pull off but worthwhile ult.

I would like to say that Nunu's ult is also larger than Galio's, and Galio's ult does not generally cause the enemy to focus cc's on him, because really not as many champions get stuck in it, and it doesnt do nearly as much damage as Nunu's ult.

Gangplank has no comparison, his ult doesn't really compare in damage unless you are RNG'd by bullets, and he is built to be a laning champion. Nunu is meant to attract damage, cc, and just attention. Gangplank does not want to do any of those things.
Completely different play-style of champions.

The main reason's to play Nunu summed up::

Fast/Effective jungle
Effective counter-jungle
Great ganking
Great support for carries specifically (though the movespeed from bloodboil is nothing to forget)Most importantly : Absorbs CC/Damage, and acts as a major distraction to the enemy.